September 2006

Acquisition and Assets"As of this month, Ex Libris is owned by Francisco Partners. The vendor's

operations will remain status quo, and the acquisition won't have a

profound impact on the larger ILS landscape—but Ex Libris developers

may soon have deeper pockets from which to pull."

Breeding also examines the implications of the Follett-Sagebrush deal, "a move

that consolidates the two largest K–12 library-automation software suppliers."

Also in SLN in September..."The Hills Are Alive with the Sounds of Mashups" by Tom PetersPeters takes a look at NYC-based Sound Seeker and its venture into audio/Web mashups. Part of the "NYSoundmap project of The New York Society for

Acoustic Ecology," Sound Seeker is way for contributors to is put "links to audio recordings taken at specific locations in New York City onto a Google map." Peters wonders, "If auditory mashups have arrived, can olfactory mashups (e.g., scratch-and-sniff maps of a fruit harvest in progress) and tactile mashups be far behind?"

"Wikipedia in a New Yorker Minute"Based on his reading of the recent "Know It All" article in The New Yorker, Peters muses about the "Wikipedia phenomenon and wonders, "What can librarianship and information science learn from [it]?" His lesson list includes:

"Collaboration on a grand scale can produce something

good and useful as well as moderately true and beautiful."

And he propounds, "We should not assume that we can know or even predict a priori the information needs and interests of a population."

And in Google Corner(ed) by Tom Peters"Accessible Google Beta: Google Labs, the fine folks at Google who developed